Pope Francis

At the end of February, I wrote a few words about Francis. It felt like the Angel of Death had come for him and I wanted to valorize him while he was alive. I’m looking at these words on the morning of his death and seeing the hovering suggestion of my arrogance. I’m a Midwestern rabbi with a very modest career. What does it matter if I valorize anyone, least of all the leader of over a billion believers? Long after I am dead and gone, Francis’ life will continue to reverberate, held in memory as something precious and fine.

That said, he was also precious to me. In many ways, he was a tentative pope. He didn’t quite enact a new program for women, who remain removed from the center of Catholic power. The only orthodox thing about me is a strain of feminism that is old and deep. I wish that Francis had done more and better. But he had a knack for saying the right thing when he could. This morning he was remembered in Canada for apologizing for the church and its oppression of tribal children. Until his pronouncements, this was unfinished business, the forcible separation of children from their heritage and their victimization in cruel, faraway boarding schools. It is still an episode of unfinished business, but Francis began the process of atonement.

But maybe his tentativeness was part of his gift: an unwillingness to pronounce with any kind of finality, a willingness to consider the complexities of the world with an open-ended embrace of his own limitations. The classic episode happened a decade ago. On his way back to the Vatican after a gathering of the Church in South America, he was asked a question about the status of gay men. He immediately noted that “homosexuality is not the problem,” and stated plainly that it was the marginalization of gay men. And then he offered a statement for the ages: “Who am I to judge” my fellow creatures?

I remind us all that this was highly unusual and stands as a monument to Francis’ humility and self-effacement. Religious leaders are arguably in the business of judgment. Their job is to pronounce on the issues of the day and place them in a framework of eternal truth. Francis could just as easily have gone rigid and doctrinaire, but his natural inclination was to note the limits of his wisdom. For that alone, he will be remembered forever, even by those with whom he disagreed.

May the memory of the righteous be for a blessing and his life an inspiration to human beings everywhere.